There lives in him, true to King George's throne, This declaration is extorted from me by the invidious introduction of Mr. Adair's name in the House of Lords, on the part of a peer who "called upon a noble relation of the person who sent him to explain some rumours respecting the supposed secret mission of Mr. Adair upon a former occasion to St. Petersburgh." Happy I was to observe that the good sense of the house immediately acquiesced in the declaration of Lord Holland, "that the insinuations upon the conduct of Mr. Fox had been so repeatedly proved to be absurd, that nothing but the perverse spirit, which had been manifested that night, could have again brought it up." I cannot however forget, dear Sir, that Mr. Burke was the first person to bring forward the odious charge against Mr. Fox and Mr. Adair formally and publicly, that it is recorded in his writings which are likely to be read by many distant generations, that a great officer of the crown has been pleased to introduce it gravely in parliament, and that a malignant spirit of party may hereafter induce other accusers to employ it to the discredit of both our friends. Four most distinguished loyalists, most experienced statesmen, and most enlightened and honourable gentlemen, Mr. Windham, Lord Spencer, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Lord Grenville, have within * Richard II. this two years formed a part of the same administration not only with Mr. Fox himself, but with Mr. Fox's jacobinical confederate, (as in effect Mr. Burke describes him,) Lord Howick, and than Lord Howick, a better subject, a sounder patriot, and an honester man never set foot in the English parliament or the English court. The Duke of Portland I grant did not enter into any conspiracy with the old or new associates of Mr. Fox, for giving effect to his jacobinical principles, and accomplishing Mr. Burke's prediction by the ruin of his country. I leave other men to praise the magnanimity and patience displayed by his Grace in renouncing for a season the profits of office, and in waiting for the opportunities which perhaps in his opinion were not very unlikely to occur, for employing his own talents and loyalty in the service of a new and more permanent administration. Virtue in the noble Duke certainly has not been left to its own reward. If we ought to believe the reproaches so vehemently urged and so widely disseminated, no predilection for political theories can even extenuate the rashness of Mr. Fox. If we ought to disbelieve them, no difference in political opinion can justify the acrimony of Mr. Burke. From him who professed to write gravely upon subjects so grave as the interests of society, the principles of morality, and the sanctions of religion, we have a right to expect deliberation at least, if not candour, before he brandishes the weapons of accusation; and even to the freedom which a sense of our common imper fections induces us to pardon in public debate, some boundaries are prescribed by the common sympathies and usages of civilized man. After the outrages to which I have adverted, Mr. Fox himself stood in little need of any concession or any praise from Mr. Burke; and the friends of Mr. Fox as will presently appear, had little cause to be pleased with a second instance of commendation for which Mr. Burke has lately been made responsible, and in the republication of which a sort of claim appears to have been set up for the credit not only of his taste but of his justice, and perhaps his placability. When Mr. Burke mentioned Mr. Fox as one "who by slow degrees had become the most brilliant and accomplished debater he had ever seen," he spoke not, and he must have been conscious of not speaking the whole truth. A man so conversant as the philosophical writer upon the sublime and beautiful has shewn himself, in exploring the powers of words to convey ideas under all their possible modifications of precision and laxity, amplification and compression, meridian brightness and twilight dimness, must have known that the epithets "most brilliant and accomplished," did not make the term "debater," co-extensive with the aggregate of Mr. Fox's merit as а public speaker. He must have known that a Dunning, a Thurlow, and a North, might with consummate propriety have been described as accomplished and most powerful debaters. He must have known that he had himself seen in Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Pitt, debaters more brilliant if not more accomplished than Mr. Fox was, according to the obvious and established signification of the words. He must have known that, in the conceptions of such enlightened and experienced observers as himself, brilliancy was not the marked excellence of Mr. Fox's speaking. He must have known that by the slightest touch of his wand, the debater in the twinkling of an eye might have been transformed into an orator. He must have known that in the angry conflicts of party, there were persons who would gladly seize upon any expression which seemed to depress the merits of Mr. Fox below their proper standard. He must have known that long observation and advanced age would give additional sanction to any judgments which he might himself pass upon his former associate, when ordinary men were likely to be surprised and charmed even at the smallest pittance of praise bestowed by him after his unhappy difference with Mr. Fox. But when political hatred had deepened the gloom which intellectual competition often spreads over the mind of man— when the splendour of Mr. Fox's name had begun to emerge from the obscurity in which it had been industriously and mischievously enveloped-when the sun of Mr. Burke's glory had in some measure ceased to be gazed at with admiration and fondness for the radiance and warmth which it had formerly diffused-when it was descending with unexpected rapidity down the horizon, and was likely soon to set in the darkness of the grave-at such a season was that wonderful man Mr. Burke more disposed to degrade Mr. Fox by what he suppressed, than to honour him by what he acknowledged. Yes, dear Sir, he was actuated by the same narrow and illiberal jealousy which had induced some anonymous but able writer in the Annual Register, 43 to notice very slightly and very coolly a most impressive speech delivered by Mr. Sheridan on the trial of Mr. Hastings. He descended to the low and inglorious artifice of "damning by faint praise," on a subject where perfect fear, mingled with imperfect shame, restrained him from venturing upon open assault. He seems to have looked upon commendation largely given to Mr. Fox, as a reward indirectly filched from his own pretensions. He scantily, and perhaps reluctantly, bore testimony to the intellectual powers of a senator who had never been tardy or insidious in applauding other speakers, and who had ascribed much of his own political knowledge, and many of his own oratorical excellencies to the aid of Mr. Burke's instructions and the influence of his example. I have often admired Mr. Burke when he "fulmined over Greece" against jacobins and scorners, and knowing him not to "be in sport," I have sometimes been disposed to forgive his want of caution when he "scattered firebrands" among the innocent as well as among the guilty. But why did Atticus give way to literary jealousy, against one whom he knew to be completely exempt from it? Mr. Burke had himself been the hearer and the ally of Mr. Fox in many debates upon many subjects, and, |